


Depths Unexpected

by Momokai



Series: sweetest touch, words like song [5]
Category: The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity, 晴雅集 | The Yin-Yang Master (2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional, Established Relationship, I'm joking calm down, Introducing: Night Tiger, M/M, Major Character Injury, Near Death Experiences, Qing Ming Fucks Up, Spirit Guardians, The Most Dialogue Yet, Unbeta'd we die like Qing Ming, Whump, but they'll get through it, i write sins not tragedies, it's big
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29606463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Momokai/pseuds/Momokai
Summary: Qing Ming knows he's miscalculated the second his protection spell fails.Alternatively:Qing Ming fucks up. It's his loved ones that pay the price.
Relationships: Qing Ming/Boya
Series: sweetest touch, words like song [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165322
Comments: 6
Kudos: 122





	Depths Unexpected

**Author's Note:**

> Me: I should stop blue balling everyone and write smut. 
> 
> Also me: But first. ANGST

Qing Ming knows he's miscalculated the second his protection spell fails. 

Except it doesn't so much fail as it does fizzle and wink out of existence as the flow of energy feeding it is inexplicably severed. It's an outcome he hadn't prepared for, didn't think would ever be something he'd have to deal with. Interfering with a Yin-Yang Masters spiritual energy is not something just anything can do. Not even the Evil Serpent, in all its ancient, horrible might had been able to take his power from him. 

From somewhere far away, he thinks he hears Night Tiger  _ (so fierce, so young, such a dedicated spirit guardian despite being so new to it)  _ scream his name, and the world drops out from beneath his feet. Everything goes black. 

.

.

.

_ He thinks he might be in agony, but everything feels so far away. He thinks he's draped over something warm and solid, the scent of a winters night doused in blood sharp in his nose. He hears someone talking, maybe to him, but he can't hear any words despite how they plead with him. He's lulled back under by a gentle sway that he doesn't think should hurt so much.  _

_. _

_. _

_. _

_ Cold, is the first thing that comes to his mind when he emerges, slow and laboriously from a deep depth he isn't sure should be there. The world is still so far away, and everything sounds like it's trapped behind a wall of water an eternity wide. He is cold but he can't say for certain if he feels it, he thinks there is warmth at his front but it bleeds away from him before he can relish it, sapped away into the water of eternity that he is almost instinctively certain is death.  _

_. _

_. _

_. _

_ There are hands on him, he thinks, more than he is sure exist in the world yet none at all. Touch is for his skin but he's not certain he has any. Sensation stolen away by greedy, eternal depths that yawn and gape wide beneath him until he thinks he falls deeper. He's terrified. Viscerally afraid because he doesn't want to fall, because a part of him knows that if he's not caught, he's never coming back. He wants someone to catch him.  _

_. _

_. _

_. _

_ Lights reach him. Bright and warm. A net of sights and sounds that make no sense for the fact that he sees and hears none of it. A choir of voices familiar yet not, reaching for him with desperate fingers made of light, screaming and begging and silent. They're falling with him, he thinks, bound to the part of him that feels so very far away, sinking into eternal waters with no mind to swim. They try to pull him up. They're failing.  _

_. _

_. _

_. _

_ There's another. Brighter, warmer, louder than the rest. Grasping him with unforgiving heat, an inferno against an endless, icy deep with wings of stars resplendent in their brilliance but for the way they strain against the weight of eternity dragging them down, down, each star a feather and each feather burning to nothing in sparks of dying light as the depths reach up to swallow them all- _

_ And then the stars go supernova, and eternity **bows**.  _

_. _

.

.

Qing Ming comes too not with the ragged gasp of the dying but the silent inhalation of one never expecting to breathe again. 

The first thing he becomes aware of is the silence. One deep and profound enough that he thinks he might be dead after all but for the fact he can feel the beat of his heart within his breast. 

The second thing he becomes aware of is the  _ pain,  _ and his breath escapes him on a pitiful, soft wheeze that rattles bones he isn't sure he wants to have anymore for the way they seem to  _ throb.  _ He doesn't move, barely even dares to breathe until the mountainous rumbles of hurt gentle themselves into a dull, body wide ache that he thinks has settled in to stay for the foreseeable future. 

Once the world ceases quaking his bones at long last, Qing Ming slowly pries heavy, sluggish eyelids open to stare muzzily at the bleak, candle lit glow of a ceiling he knows instantly to be the one above his own bed. He blinks at it, perplexedly wondering at its presence and just how it got there. 

He lays there unmoving and confused for an undetermined stretch of time as sense slowly, laboriously returns to him in drips and drabs, only peripherally aware of a line of heat seeping into his side through the heavy fall of silken sheets. As awareness returns, he is gently niggled by the thought that he seems to have forgotten something. He knows, abstractly, that he is not where he once was, but is not alarmed by this idea because he thinks he understands enough to know that this is a good thing. He is hurt. He is home. His home is not where the danger is. The grounding warmth at his side is  _ safety.  _

His neck almost seems to creak in protest as he slowly, carefully turns his head to the side and it takes his fuzzy mind a long, exhausting moment to make sense of what his eyes are seeing once they settle. The line of heat and safety curled delicately along his side is a sleeping body. A body he is gratefully familiar with. 

"Boya." His voice is barely a croak, more a breath of air past his lips, frayed at the edges and so distressingly weak he wonders how long it's been since he last used it. The near soundlessness of it falls between them impotently, and Boya does not stir. Qing Ming forces his flagging eyes to focus, and stares in dismay as he takes in the almost waxy complexion of his lovers face. There are deep, dark smudges under the gently sweeping curves of his closed eyes, thin, dark lashes feathering cheeks far too pale for his liking, and Qing Ming is suddenly glad that he had not managed to rouse him. Boya looks as distressingly exhausted as Qing Ming himself feels, and he once again wonders just how long he has apparently been unconscious- he doesn't even remember how he  _ got _ this way. 

He is obviously injured in some fashion, severely by the pain he even now still feels pulsing deep under his skin and the relentless pull of sleep tugging his stubborn eyes closed. He is dreadfully weary in body, mind and spiritual energy. The biggest tell however, is not how he feels in this moment, but the look of the man sleeping at his side. Boya is not one to truly fret without cause, he is a man of strength in the face of difficulty and rarely allows his worries to extend so far as to affect his health. Right now he looks as if he has not slept in far too long, and the pallid quality of his skin does not speak well for any appetite. This is how Qing Ming knows that he has blundered tremendously. 

He wants to move, to lift his arm and use it to settle Boya more firmly against him, but his arm is a dead weight at his side atop the sheets that does not want to lighten no matter how much he wills it to. His lover slumbers on, blessedly ignorant of Qing Ming's struggle, warm breath fanning damp and rhythmic against his bared shoulder, and Qing Ming reluctantly ceases, and allows the gentle sound of sleep deep breathing to lull him back into the painless depths. 

-

He is woken some time later by the flutter of silk and a gentle hand in his hair, and Qing Ming peels his eyes open to find the blurry outline of his sweet butterfly hovering over him. Honey Bug notices his rousing, and her painted lips pull into a tumultuous smile that wobbles at the edges. 

"Master." She whispers gratefully, and Qing Ming inexplicably feels like an absolute cad as tears gather in her eyes. She cards her fingers through his hair again and sniffs quietly, petting him as she tells him what he has missed, ever dutiful. 

"Night Tiger brought you home," She begins, sweet voice just barely audible for how softly she speaks. "He carried you for miles before he could safely open a portal without the barrier destroying it." Qing Ming wants to ask  _ what  _ barrier, but keeps his questions for later, because Honey Bug continues speaking and stroking his hair. 

"We all knew something was wrong. We could feel it," She breaks off, voice hitching on a sob. "You were dying, master, and we couldn't find you. If Night Tiger hadn't brought you back when he did-" Qing Ming feels himself go cold, and he wants to reach for his sweet, hurting butterfly but his body still refuses to obey his commands, and he remains helpless as her tears spill over. 

_ Master and Guardian share one lifeline.  _ If he had died, he would have taken his spirits with him. 

"We tried everything. We stopped the bleeding well enough but there was something wrong with your energy. Something was-was  _ devouring  _ it and we couldn't stop it." That...certainly explained why he felt exhausted to his  _ soul.  _ Something had tried to  _ take it.  _

Honey Bug pats the tears from her cheeks with the edge of her flowing sleeve, and swallows. 

"We almost lost you.  _ Would have  _ if-" She finally tears her eyes from him and glances to his side, and Qing Ming follows her gaze to the man still sleeping deeply against his side. 

"He pulled you back," Honey Bug flutters the hand not in his hair at Boya's still figure, "He wasn't even  _ here  _ but he must have felt it like we did because suddenly we felt  _ him _ and then we had you." She smiles wetly and sniffs again, finally removing her hand from his hair to fuss delicately with the blankets, tugging them higher up his chest before standing to quietly round the bed until she could do the same with the second blanket Qing Ming hadn't even noticed draped over Boya, who was very much sleeping  _ on top _ of the bedding. 

She giggles quietly as she smooths a gentle hand through Boya's hair, brushing a few sleep rumpled strands behind his ear. Amazingly, he doesn't stir at the touch despite being a frighteningly light sleeper. He  _ must  _ be exhausted. 

"I think he ran all the way here, master. We barely had you for a day and he comes bursting through the door." She huffs. "Night Tiger thought he was a demon come to finish you off. You really should have introduced them sooner, master." Honey Bug levels him with a  _ look,  _ and Qing Ming smiles despite himself, tickled at the thought of his newest guardians loyalty and what must have been a fright for him if Boya had indeed burst into their home in a panic, though he deeply and viscerally regrets being the cause of such a state. 

"Ah," he says at length, voice only marginally stronger. "What a fuss I've caused." And he doesn't even remember any of it- be it side effect of apparently almost  _ dying  _ or something more sinister, Qing Ming does not know, but he vows that as soon as his body decides to listen to him again, he will make amends. Heavens know he has much to make up for, his apparent carelessness  _ (probably)  _ causing a fear and heartache in his loved ones the likes of which pains  _ him  _ in ways he hasn't quite experienced before. 

"I'm alright, now." He tells Honey Bug with a certainty that she raises a delicate brow at. He sighs. However long a shot it was, it was the truth. Mostly. He's not actively dying anymore at any rate. His sweet butterfly, vicious to the last, and he doesn't think reassuring Boya will be any easier. In fact, he thinks he might be in for it. Oh dear.

-

When next Qing Ming opens his eyes, he is greeted by the early morning rays of sunlight streaming faintly through the windows and feels a little less like death warmed over. 

He doesn't much remember drifting back to sleep after listening to Honey Bug recount the happenings after his apparent  _ mishap,  _ seemingly having dropped off somewhere around the time she resettled at his side and started carding her fingers through his hair again, the act comforting to both of them. 

He wants to stretch upon waking fully, but stops himself at the last moment lest he aggravate any injuries, and instead settles for a long, weary sigh. He is still tired, he notices, despite being bedridden for however long, something that does not really surprise him after Honey Bug's recounting. Something had attacked his  _ soul _ and that was no small thing easy to bounce back from whatever his constitution. He is struck with forlorn premonition of his immediate future- bed rest and more bed rest, interspersed with boredom, likely bland feedings and no few  _ lectures.  _

He doesn't think he can escape. His muscles still seem to possess the consistency of overcooked noodles, and that is without factoring in any pain the attempt might cause. Qing Ming is no stranger to pain nor a wilting flower, but that does not mean he  _ enjoys _ it, the best he can avoid it the better actually, as he is also not wholly above  _ whining _ about it in some cases, and with his current condition being as it is, he has no doubt that he'll end up bemoaning his state at some point. With any luck, his mixed blood will aid in the healing process, as it is usually want to. 

The backs of warm fingers alight upon the skin of his cheek, and Qing Ming turns his gaze from the window, careful not to dislodge them. At his side, Boya rests with his head propped on one elbow, and Qing Ming blinks as he realizes his lover had been awake long before him, perhaps even having risen with the sun, as he usually does. 

“Boya.” He greets, voice heavy only with the weight of deep sleep and not breathless weakness. In response, Boya’s hand shifts to his other cheek and grasps his face before wordlessly swooping in to catch his lips in a startlingly desperate, if infinitely careful kiss. Qing Ming responds gladly, lifting his hand  _ (finally)  _ to slot it between the warm curve of his lover's neck and jaw, cradling his head the best he can with one hand while Boya devours his lips in a way that tells Qing Ming that he has  _ wronged _ him. 

They part for air, both breathing a little heavier, _ (Qing Ming, because of unexpected weakness and Boya likely feeling more than he can process)  _ and Qing Ming swallows thickly through the dryness brought by too long without water. 

“I’m alright.” He says against the lips that haven’t left his, not seeking to press in, merely to rest there for the closeness. Boya makes a dark sound, somewhere deep in his throat, and Qing Ming sighs. “Boya-”

“I am  _ angry  _ with you.” Boya says, and sounds anything but- which, Qing Ming thinks, might make it worse.

“Boya-” He tries again, but is once more interrupted. 

“Why didn’t you call on me?” And oh, if he doesn’t sound  _ hurt  _ instead. Qing Ming gently presses his thumb into the hook of Boya’s jaw and pulls him back down, kissing him again. He doesn’t know if it's an apology, an expression of guilt or a diversion- but either way Boya melts into it for only a heartbeat before he makes that dark, angry sound again and pulls away, properly this time. 

“You nearly  _ died,  _ Qing Ming.” Boya states, and his expression is frighteningly blank. Qing Ming winces, but before he can say anything Boya speaks again;

“I was on a road in the middle of  _ nowhere  _ and I felt you dying,” Contrary to the expressionless cast of his face, Boya’s voice breaks, “And I couldn’t do a  _ thing about it. _ Why didn’t you call Vermilion Bird?” Qing Ming’s breath escapes him as his heart plummets into icy depths at the sight of a tear spilling down Boya’s cheek, and he pulls his pained lover back to him to take his lips and press as much apology and reassurance as he can into them. If, when he did eventually die much later, he had to name any one of the sins he regrets most before the gods, it would be that he had not just hurt the one he loves most in the world, but made him feel  _ helpless.  _

"I'm so sorry, Boya." He breathes into the kiss. Boya, in response bites his lip  _ hard _ \- and Qing Ming can accept that. He'll have to work to be forgiven, a fact he has already sworn to but vows anew anyway. 

And after, they'll have to sit down and discuss this, because Boya isn't wrong to ask him  _ why _ . Despite having recently added Night Tiger  _ (fierce and strong but so young)  _ to his side, he should not have relied solely on him. He should have called on Vermilion Bird, on  _ Boya _ as well, regardless of the way the thought of putting him in harms way,  _ using him  _ in such a way, sours his blood and makes his teeth ache with the force he exerts on them. Boya is adamantly willing, and Qing Ming should not do him the disservice of keeping him aside to spare his own bleeding heart, time and again. He shouldn't make him have to experience such agonising helplessness again. 

He had joked about this once, long ago brushed it aside and waved it off with good humor. 

_ Qing Ming hates himself for it.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Qing Ming: 😴  
> Boya: *Kicks the door down* Where is he so I can kill him!  
> Night Tiger: *ScReAmiNG*  
> Honey Bug: *Sighs* 
> 
> For those wondering yes, Night Tiger is an OC. He is inspired by the Chinese Baihu, Guardian of the West, and is usually depicted as a white tiger. 
> 
> He has white hair, blue eyes, rocks a tiger pelt and looks like a god damn teenager. He's uniquely suited to combat, hence Qing Ming summoning him despite having only adopt-I mean bound him a short time previous. There may be a side story for that...


End file.
